what?’ Bee asked sharply. ‘What’s wrong with that? It’s perfectly normal for a child of her age. Why doesn’t Dias mind her own business?’
He took out his pipe and began to fill it with tobacco.
‘Alice will be fine,’ he said irritably. And tell Dias that Sita will be coming back with May in a few days’ time. They’ll be fine, too. That woman should look after her own daughter instead of interfering with other people’s affairs.’
Kamala sighed and Bee pushed his chair back and stood up. He would be in his studio, should anyone want him.
‘Tell Alice to come and find me when she wakes,’ was all he said.
Kamala watched his receding back. A small rush of cooler air made her shiver. There was something he was not telling her, but she knew Bee was stubborn and would speak only in his own time.
They had been together for thirty years. When they had first married, she had been a girl of only eighteen. Bee had been the new teacher in the boys’ school. Kamala’s father had decided Bee was a suitable match for his daughter. Both sides approved and Kamala was introduced to him. They had both been young; the British had still been in power. After they were married, every time Bee had seen the British flag flying he would swear. At first Kamala had been amazed by his fury, but later on it had delighted her. Until that moment she had no real idea of his true character. Politics had never crossed her mind. In this backwater she had not met anyone as forthright as Bee. Her father and brothers were very conservative, diplomatic, quiet. Bee was different and Kamala liked his hot-headedness, his passion. Later, as she got to know him better, she felt the weight of this passion turn itself towards her with astonishing force. She fell in love. They had been married for three months when she fell both pregnant and in love almost simultaneously. Not for her this English notion of romantic love before marriage. Kamala’s love had come slowly like a small stream, appearing first as a trickle, then gathering pace until it grew into the great river that it was today, flowing steadily down to a larger sea. For this reason Kamala had puzzled over Sita and she had found Stanley an even greater mystery. Her daughter had hardly known the man. Given their different backgrounds, how could Sita be sure she loved him? But when Kamala had tried to discuss these things with Bee he had refused to be drawn. Not for the first time in their marriage she came up against his stubbornness. From this she had known how deep his hurt had gone, and because of this she had kept her own counsel. It had not been easy. Then Alice had arrived. The child had switched on the light they so desperately needed. Although, Kamala reflected sadly, she had also brought them a whole different set of anxieties.
Preparing to go to bed at last, Kamala thought back to the day Alice had been born. How happy they had been on that day. Moonlight fell across the garden sending great shadows from the lone coconut tree on to the gravel.
‘I’ll just have another look at her,’ Bee said, coming in, glancing at her, ‘check she’s asleep.’
Kamala nodded and waited. She was praying silently to the Buddha for peace to return to the house. Incense drifted through the open window. The night was cooler as they lay, side by side, in their old antique bed in a room steeped in bluish moonlight and scented as always by the sea. This was the bed where first Sita and then May had been born. Life and death, thought Kamala sadly, here in this house.
‘We might need to prepare for another visitor,’ Bee said quietly.
‘When?’
‘Not sure. After the demonstration, is my guess.’
Outside a solitary owl hooted and the moon moved slowly across the sea.
‘So at least you can still help someone,’ she murmured.
She felt infinitely old. Turning, she faced Bee, moving closer to him as she had done every night, without fail, all these years. He smelled faintly of tobacco and of linseed oil; he had been smoking too much in the last few days. It wasn’t only this news she was waiting for. She was certain there was something else. A train rushed past.
‘What is it?’ she asked at last, fearfully, in Singhalese.
Bee said nothing. He lay motionless for so long that she wondered if he had heard her. She hesitated, a cold fear in her mouth, willing him to speak. Finally he moved restlessly, his face unreadable.
‘Stanley leaves in a month,’ he said. ‘He’s got a passage to England. He decided to leave first and get a job, then send for them. I’ve told him that I will pay their fare. That way they won’t be parted from him. It will be better that way. Alice needs both her parents and the family must not be split up. They’ll be gone in four months at the most.’
Outside, the sea moved softly. The beach was empty, the water a churning mass of silvery black. Nothing could distinguish it from the dark unending emptiness of sky.
WHEN THE MOMENT SHE HAD DREADED finally arrived and she saw her mother walking slowly up the garden in her faded orange sari, Alice felt her legs grow unaccountably heavy and turn to stone. Kamala coaxed her out on to the verandah and reluctantly down the steps, a bunch of gladioli thrust out in front of her face. Long after she had forgotten her mother’s lop-sided expression of trying not to cry, Alice remembered the deep, burnt orange of the flowers and the shimmering sea-light. She gave Sita an awkward hug and the scent of the flowers passed violently between them. Dazzling sea colours of a certain unbelievable blueness flew into the house while the sound of the cicadas rose and fell in feverish cadence, reminding Alice of the Buddhist monks. It was Kamala who took charge of the situation, enfolding her daughter in a loving embrace, recalling the day Sita had walked in with the newborn Alice. No one else was capable of much. Within minutes Sita was installed in a chair and a cup of weak coriander tea was in her hand.
‘I’ll put your mama’s flowers in a vase in her room,’ Kamala told the child, smiling encouragingly, aware of some indecision. ‘She can see them when she has her rest.’
Alice nodded. She was a murderer. In the awkward silence that followed, Sita stared straight ahead at the sea. Two catamarans with dark patched sails stood motionless in the distance. Alice stole a surreptitious look in the direction of her mother. Sita had wanted a boy named Ravi but, because it had been a girl, they would have called her Rachel after the child in the film, Hand in Hand. Alice swallowed.
‘Did it hurt?’ she asked eventually.
Without warning her mother began to cry, a thin long howl followed by great choking sobs. Her sari was coming undone. Alice stared at her in dismay, wishing she hadn’t spoken.
‘Mama,’ she said uncertainly, looking around for her grandmother, wishing Janake would come over as he had promised. Sita looked frightening and unfamiliar. Her body was its old shape with her stomach almost flat again. She began to speak in a high, strange voice that wobbled on the edge of hysteria. Panic-stricken, Alice called her grandmother.
‘I thought my legs were being pulled apart,’ Sita was saying through a storm of tears. ‘And then my stomach collapsed. They didn’t let me see her, they didn’t want me to!’
She wrung her hands and her face twisted with the effort of trying to speak while she cried.
‘We have to leave this place, Alice. We must go far away from these murderers. We must go to England. Your dada is leaving first, but we must follow.’
Alice stood rooted to the spot. Her mother looked like one of the puppets she had seen at the fair. Her grandparents, coming in just then, moved swiftly.
‘Come, come, Sita, don’t upset yourself and Alice with talk like that. Let’s take you into the bedroom.’
‘Give your mother a kiss, Alice,’ Bee said calmly, ‘and then she must rest. After that I want you to come with me; there’s something I have for you. I’ve been waiting for the right moment.’
They stepped out into the hot afternoon, and turned towards